Way back in 1987, filmmaker Oliver Stone achieved an amazing double-whammy at the box office and Academy Awards with the one-two punch of “Wall Street” and “Platoon.” While “Platoon” managed to win Best Picture and “Wall Street” scored the Best Actor Oscar for Michael Douglas, it’s Douglas’ iconic performance as slimy stock trading magnate Gordon Gekko that has stood the test of time and remains eminently quotable to this day. Most impressively, both films said something profound about American society and the human condition.
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Cut to nearly a quarter-century later, and Stone has lost some his clout after spending the past decade making films that were all over the map politically and stylistically. He’s created a family-values, all-American take on 9/11 in “World Trade Center” as well as the off-the-charts lefty documentary “South of the Border” on Hugo Chavez and other leftist South American leaders this year, with a surreal and surprisingly sympathetic biopic on President George W. Bush in “W.” in between.
Now, however, he’s returned to some of his strongest territory by showing what happens when Gordon Gekko is unleashed on the financial industry amid the meltdown of 2008 in his new sequel, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” And it’s a welcome return to form from a master who tops the first film in many ways.
The new film replaces the first’s stellar star turn by a young Charlie Sheen with another twentysomething hotshot, Jake Moore, played by Shia LaBeouf. LaBoeuf thankfully steps into Sheen’s shoes with a performance that covers all the bases from the callow cockiness of youth through his despair over losing everything around him to the romantic determination of a guy who just wants to win back his girl, even if it means losing the world.
Jake is sucked into Gekko’s universe because his fiancé, Winnie (Carrie Mulligan), is the mastermind’s estranged daughter. After Gordon was released from prison in 2001, he was left alone in the world and lacking in the funds to regain his status as a titan, so now he’s stuck giving speeches to college students and doing a book tour for his memoir “Is Greed Good?” – a clever about-face on his most famous line in the original film: “Greed is good.”
Winnie has forbidden Jake from having contact with Gordon, but after Jake’s firm goes belly-up in bad trades and his mentor (stunningly played by Frank Langella) is suddenly out of the picture, he’s desperate for a job and approaches the former titan. Gekko becomes his new mentor, claiming that he’s atoned for his past sins and that he wants to re-enter Winnie’s life again.
Gordon inspires Jake to get revenge on the modern-day slime kingpin (Josh Brolin) who brought Jake’s firm down, and soon Jake finds himself caught ever tighter in Gordon’s grasp. But as events unfold, Winnie keeps warning Jake to watch out for her father, certain that he’ll eventually betray Jake.
The tension over whether that betrayal will happen, and what Jake will do if it does, sets in motion a very complex yet intelligent and rewarding string of events and double-crosses that makes the sequel more entertaining than the original. Stone has also employed the vast advances in effects from the past 23 years to help convey what could have been arcane trivia into eye-catching and easily digestible explanations that keep viewers fully invested in the story.
MILD SPOILER: But what’s most surprising about the new film is the fact that Stone has made this film an homage to family, and in particular the effect that an unborn child can have on even the hardest of hearts. That statement may seem like an obvious giveaway of the film’s plot, but while it’s unavoidable to mention it, the issue of the impending baby is still embedded in the array of twists to brilliant effect.
Coming from a guy who has had a track record of films with psychedelic freakouts and wanton debauchery, from “Natural Born Killers” to “U-Turn,” or anti-capitalist and anti-American sentiments in films like “South of the Border” and a recent documentary on Fidel Castro, this is a stunningly refreshing change of pace. Here, he’s not saying only that greed is bad, but that family and the time you have on earth is worth more than any amount of money. Capitalism and wealth can bring happiness, if one strives to make moral and ethical choices above sheer dollar-driven ones.
Best of all, Douglas shows that you can go home again, returning to his greatest role without losing a step, and even adding new dimensions to what was already a pitch-perfect portrayal. Facing down cancer in his real life, Douglas was likely able to feel the emotions that Gekko is forced to face – of time, age, family and what matters most in this world. Godspeed to Douglas’ recovery, and get thee to the theater.
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